


3-If Memory Serve Me

by WritestuffLee



Series: The Warrior's Heart, Volume 4, The Long Shadow [3]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, M/M, POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-01
Updated: 2006-12-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 15:32:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritestuffLee/pseuds/WritestuffLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Obi-Wan muses how everything has changed in a year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3-If Memory Serve Me

I stand at the window in sunlight, surrounded by Qui-Gon’s presence, though he’s gone to teach one of his classes. A halfyear of his continuous residence in these rooms has filled them with his aura, clear and green with the flavor of a spring wind and the scent of leaf mould and forest wakening in the sun. It’s as good as a vacation to stand here and soak it up. And yet things are not as I thought they would be.

Could he have changed so much in such a short time?

Or am I just not remembering correctly? Have I always edited out the soft folds of flesh beneath his eyes? The fine webwork of lines crossing them? And I don’t remember this blue in them, this pale, washed-out-around-the-edges blue. I know he’s not been sleeping well, and why—neither have I—but he’s never looked so tired before, except after an injury. I don’t remember his eyes looking so hollow. Or so sad.

I do remember the laugh lines at the corners, the creases above his brows, the furrows running from nose to mouth. I remember that. I remember the soft curve of his upper lip, the lushness of his lower one. I remember how good he tastes: of spicy cha, wine, sleep. Of joy. Of home.

But I don’t remember all that grey in his hair, either, or the number of strands turning to silver. Or the grey in his beard and mustache. Or that his temples had gone completely grey. When did that happen? I wasn’t gone that long. That couldn’t have happened in a halfyear. When did he start braiding his hair down his back at night? Was that just because I wasn’t here to help him with it? The slight wave in it when he unbraids it in the morning seems so odd, for all that the weight of it pulls it straight again quickly enough.

It’s still like raw silk in my hands, still thick and heavy and prone to tangles. It still takes a coarse comb to get through it the first time after he’s washed it. It still glows like old metal in the right light after I’ve brushed it for him. I love the smell of it when he’s just washed it. I love rubbing my face against it, though that’s different now I’ve grown out my own beard. It catches now and musses it so I have to start over with the brush and comb.

Qui likes it though. The beard, I mean. He’s always stroking it with his knuckles, down the sideburns and under my chin and over my throat, the way I’ve seen him pet furry creatures: long fingers scratching gently, smoothing down the hair until whatever it is he’s petting is transfixed with pleasure. He can make me purr just like one of his creatures, too.

And his hands. He’s lost the calluses we all have from handling a saber. His palms are smooth and soft now, like a stranger’s hands, when they glide over my skin. I can’t get used to it; he’s only just gone back to the salles and they’re tender from it, swollen sometimes. I miss the rasp and scratch, the hardness of them in contrast to their gentleness. He’s lost a bit of strength in them, too, or rather hasn’t fully regained what he had.

Or maybe I just remember him gripping me more firmly because I’ve missed it so much. It’s so good to feel his hands on me again, curved under my ass, around my cock, against my cheek. It’s good to feel them mapping my body once more, rediscovering my sensitive spots. It’s good to feel that strength and tenderness as he moves me and holds me.

Even his body seems different to me. He seems leaner and the leanness makes him seem even taller. I feel as though we fit together differently than we did before I went away. When I lie against him, there’s not so much mass between me and the bones of him. I fancy I can hear his heart more loudly. I’m almost afraid I’ll bruise him now, inadvertently. Even his hips seem narrower when I straddle him, and I know that’s not possible. He’s lost some flexibility as well. When he moves, I hear his knees crack, his hips creak, even when we’re making love.

But I watch him in the mornings when he’s doing his ki routine and he seems as graceful as ever, a slow dancer moving to his own rhythm, balanced and sturdy, as grounded as though he had roots. And that slowness suits him now. He’s never been fast in the same way I am, but his reflexes and muscle memory are still flawless and quick. Where I’m always anticipating, Qui waits for it all to come to him now, patient and serene in his waiting as a Third Degree Master should be. It’s a lesson I could still learn.

I’m still learning from him. That’s the one thing that’s not changed, and thank the Force for that. There’s been so much change. And yet, everything is the same. We still love each other. We’re still finding new ways to explore that love, to share our lives as much as possible, to be true to our vocations and to each other. So much is not the way I expected it to be when I reached my knighthood. Everything’s different now that I’ve been knighted—me, our relationship, Qui-Gon himself, the pattern of our life together. Once I went off on my own, it was inevitable that we would change in different ways, instead of the lock-step we marched in when he was my master. Our paths have already diverged. He’s sensed it as much as I’ve not wanted to, and we’re both uneasy with it.

Is it I who’ve changed? Or is it Qui? Or both? Perhaps it’s not that he’s changed at all, only that I’m seeing him differently, and he, me. Or have our memories edited what we would rather not remember? Does it matter?

I don’t know. Surely not in this moment. The changes we notice when we’re apart from each other for any length of time are the same ones that happen every day, under observation and all unnoticed. But the moments pile on one another, the present forever moving into the future, and yet always _now_. And so change occurs, in tiny increments we fail to notice until one day we look up and the person we love has become someone else—someone with more grey than we remember, with more worry lines, more signs of stress and disquiet and the struggle back toward health, and the surprise at how different we seem to them.


End file.
